At The End Of The Day
by seeyoustandingthere
Summary: A few days after the Season 2 Finale. Deacon waits for an answer. Rayna is on her way.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Nashville, these characters, or the love they share. I just want to celebrate it all before we find out whether our dreams will come true or be shattered in Season 3.**

**AN: Gosh, I love these two. This is set a few days after the S2 Finale. Spoilers for the entire show so far!**

**At The End Of The Day**

She finds him at the cabin. He's on the porch, camomile tea in a mug beside him, staring out onto the water. The air is damp, and the collar of his jacket is up against it as the day just begins to draw to a close. The rails and deck creak softly as she approaches, like a ship on the turn. He senses her and half looks, not making eye contact. She sits carefully beside him, leaving enough inches between them as she has learned the hard way over the years that she must do. It's not enough, of course, and has never been. A million miles would not be enough.

"This is hard," she says, after a short silence, tucking her hands between her knees.

"What?" he asks, even though he fears her answer.

"What is the right way to tell a man who has asked you to marry him, a man you love, that you choose someone else? How do you do that?"He exhales slowly, stares at the ground, at their feet, at the dewy grass and the rippling water's edge. Anywhere but at her.

"I don't know, Ray. I guess you just have to say it." She sighs and dips her forehead briefly against his shoulder. "Or, you know you could write a song about it, that's how us passive aggressive Country musicians do it." She smiles, and he feels her thinking about all the times they've done that, used that shield to tell each other all the things that seemed way too big to say without a stage between them.

"Want me to get my guitar?" He quips, trying to keep things light even though he feels like his feet are welded to the ground.

He turns almost imperceptibly towards her smile, feeling the ache in his heart start up anew. This is going to be harder to hear than he'd imagined .Even though he has half expected it, he has remained hopeful, placing his trust in the universe. If they are meant to be, and he has his view about that, then they will be. If she has to go and marry another man again in order to figure that out, well so be it. It is worse this time though. Last time he wasn't really there. This time he is whole, and ready, and the idea that she has decided against him under those circumstances is hard to bear.

"You know what I'm going to say, Deacon. "

He sighs this time, nodding to no-one in particular as he wonders if this will be the last time they will spend here together. If she will distance herself from him now out of guilt and in an attempt to put all her energy into making this marriage work. He knows she won't want another public divorce battle. She must love the cowboy. She must be in love with him. He thinks of the next ten years being the interloper, always on the edge of things, dropping Maddie off at what will become Rayna and Luke's family home. God, will they even stay in Nashville? He swallows that terror. He sees Maddie sitting around a dinner table with Rayna and Luke and Daphne, and then pushes that image away quickly before it can develop. Best not to see it too clearly. He learned that the hard way trying to drive the image of Rayna and Luke out of his mind. Exorcising the sight of her in that dress, kissing him, onstage, their domain, _theirs_, letting him put that ring on her in front of seventy thousand people - well he didn't mind admitting that had not come easy. It had not come at all. In trying to achieve that kind of closure he had found himself at her door late at night, making his own case. There is no getting over Rayna Jaymes.

He's kind of grateful to Luke. Jealous, that he got there first, that he had that moment with her, was seen to be loved by her so publicly. But damn grateful too. Because the physical sickness he felt seeing Luke down on one knee was overwhelming, and his very visceral reaction to it was ultimately what made him throw his own hat in the ring. Yes, he'd made it clear for the best part of twenty years that Rayna was his one true love, but he'd never really got his shit together at the right moment, and just as he had decided to play the long game, time inexplicably leapt forward. And suddenly he was too late.

Meeting Maddie's eyes as the crowd applauded the engagement, he saw in her the same disappointment he felt. And man, that made him move. Quicker than he had ever moved before, emotionally speaking. Wherever he was going he had to just get there already. And if he's too late and she's going to say no then at least he tried. At least he got to tell her, and it was from the heart, and it was what she deserved, not that public display he knows damn well she would never have chosen. He knows her too well. She may love the man himself but she did not love the position he put her in out there and it hadn't escaped his notice that Rayna hadn't actually said _yes. _She let Luke put on the ring, but she didn't actually say it. It gave Deacon hope that burned like whisky going down as he raced home to think, to pace, to find that goddamn ring. That hope has faded now, but he feels the mark it has left. Whatever she is going to say here by the water, he knows that when he stood in front of her the other night he was very much back in the game.

He stands, and takes a few steps towards the water, a gold-pink glassy surface, so beautiful, so much like her. So radiant to look at but nothing you can really hold in your hand in that pure form. He reasons that, on the spectrum of emotional moments they have created and shared together, it is perhaps only right that those should include a failed proposal. It seems like a rite of passage for something so all consuming. It's kind of a miracle it's taken so long. But then, he remembers, it isn't the first proposal. I They are just feet away from the scene of that moment, and it cuts him to the bone that she said yes that time and he wasted it. Missed it even. Maybe this is his final punishment. Karma. That she'll say no now, when he's so ready and it feels so right.

She levels up with him, a few strands of red hair ribboning out across the sleeve of his jacket.

"This feels like the end of an era," she says, and she hands him the ring. It feels heavy in his palm. Tears begin to gather, threatening his composure. This is it, then.

"I don't want it back. I told you. It's yours, whatever you decide." If she doesn't want it, it may as well go in the water, buried treasure to mark the spot where it's meaning began and ended.

"Deacon..." Her voice is soft, almost apologetic. He can't bear it. He grits his teeth and furrows his brow deeply. She can pat him on the head while she breaks his heart if it'll make her feel better, but he's damned if he's going to say thank you.

"Deacon," she insists, a little louder now. "I'm not giving it back." He pauses for a second, and when he risks a look at her, there she is, in technicolor, hair lifted by the breeze from the water, eyes brimming in that way she has that can undo him in an instant. She's tearful, too. She swallows and stumbles for her words.

"I think, to make it official, I'm supposed to be wearing it." His gaze rises involuntarily to meet hers, and he stares for a full few seconds before it makes sense. She is holding out her left hand, slender fingers extended towards him. Deacon blinks, feeling like he is on the brink of some huge emotional outburst, and he still can't tell which way it's going to go. Then he looks down and something strikes him in the chest. She is not wearing the cowboy's ring.

"My god, Rayna, are you trying to give me a heart attack?" He exhales, as the words rush out. She can't answer, choking up, her eyes searching out his final reaction like she had that night on his doorstep a year ago. Laying herself on the line after making him think it was totally off the table. So Rayna. He pinches his eyes with one hand, reaches for her with the other, smiling, shaking his head, experiencing the full gamut of emotions she is capable of extracting from him in the space of six seconds.

"Are you... " he falters, and tries again, trying to hold it together, "are you saying yes?" Her tears spill over then as her million dollar smile breaks across her face, and later they won't remember who went first because they will both have shed so many . She nods.

"Yes." She says, holding him in rapture with her eyes, still, certain in the late afternoon light. "I'm saying yes."

They stare at each other a long moment, incredulous, intoxicated, before his own smile breaks and he can't stop it. He pulls her closer, and, blinking back tears he slides the ring onto her finger and stares in sheer joy and disbelief at the sight of it. It fits her perfectly. As though it was made for her yesterday. As though it has not been fifteen years since she last wore it. Her arms go round his neck and his face into her hair and they hold each other so tightly for what feels like an hour, losing more tears, holding on for dear life. Until he can wait no longer and he pulls gently back, taking her face in his hands and kissing her with almost painful tenderness, again and again, tasting their tears on her lips. He kisses her like his life depends upon it. And maybe now his life can.

She kisses him back with all the grace and passion that made her famous, sweeping her hands over his face, hair, chest, unable to settle for any one part of him, such is the desire to touch him. The relief is intense, the darkness so rapidly replaced by light.

He's completely taken aback. As much as he has thought about the moment when she would come to him and tell him what she had decided, he hasn't thought about how he would feel afterwards. Hell, if he's honest he's long imagined scenarios in which he is married to Rayna, proposing to Rayna, marrying Rayna. He's thought about the what, but not the how that would feel. His heart is soaring. The tears are a surprise to him, though. He feels tender, like she has reached in and massaged his heart. But then he's never been able to hide his emotions from her, and he's never much wanted to. It's all been about her, anyway, in one way or another, and really the fact that she has known that and not ever reacted to it with any sort of self importance or been freaked out by his intensity might just be the proof he's always needed that somehow they would end up here. The truth that's been hiding in plain sight. He lets her go just barely to speak, his voice catching in his throat in that way he has that he doesn't know turns her knees weak.

"For the record, I did _not_ know you were going to say that." She smiles.

"Well," she says, and she pulls him back in by his lapels, suspending the thought - all rational thought- with a killer kiss, "I know you like it when I surprise the hell out of you."

Later, some hours later, they lie entangled and snug beneath his bedcovers, staring out of the unshuttered cabin window as the last minutes of dusk turn to darkness. This twilight has been their most amazing hour to date; every moment filled with joy and hope, all remnants of yesterday's maybes replaced with all the wonder of this messy, beautiful today and their now certain tomorrows.

Deacon lays curled around her, his big arms mirroring the line of her fine bone china limbs, building a fort around her. She lays sleepily in his embrace, other arm wrapped tightly around him, face inches from his, leg hooked over his thigh beneath the covers. She doubts she will ever want to wear pyjamas again. Being next to him like this is raw and emotional, rather unexpectedly so. She thinks it is because he knows now. This is what brought them Maddie. They did that, with their love, they made her, and now when he looks into her eyes as he touches her (so gently she wants to cry), he knows. He knows that this body made his daughter, carried her, nursed her. It's a miracle, and he is borderline evangelical in his attentions to her. Their chemistry has always been like touch paper and match. But this, this is beyond any of that. This new freedom she feels to love him and be loved by him comes out in every touch, every kiss, every word. She cannot get enough of him.

"Thank you," she murmurs.

"For what?"

"For putting your heart on the line like that. I'd probably have gone on pretending, too afraid to face up to my own feelings." He lifts her hand, laces his fingers with hers. Feels that ring, exactly where it ought to be.

"Long enough to marry Luke?" She thinks for a second.

"Maybe. I honestly hadn't decided how I felt about that. But I wasn't going to leave him hanging up there in front of all those people while I thought about it." She smiles wryly. "He's not too happy with me, by the way." He looks surprised.

"You told him already?"

"Yeah." So it possibly had not gone well, if her earlier comment, which now made a whole different kind of sense, were anything to go by.

"Wow. I guess I won't be getting a spot on his next tour."

"I broke his heart," she says, leaving a beat between each word, as though it is hard to say out loud. "And it was hard to do. And I kind of hate myself for it. But there was no other way."

He runs his hand up her arm, kisses her shoulder.

"Yeah."

"I want you to know," she says, running her hands over his shoulders and into his hair, "that none of that was false, or to get at you, or make you jealous. I hope you know that."

"Come on now, Rayna. I know that's not your style."

"I feel like I need to be completely honest here. I don't want people to think that he hugely misjudged the situation by proposing. It _was _sudden, but I suppose I might've given him the impression that was what I wanted."

"And was it?" He holds his breath waiting for her to answer, reminding himself that it's moot, she has said _yes._

"No. It's like you said, in trying to move on I was lying to myself again. I can't say it was a miserable lie, but it was a lie nonetheless. " He stiffens slightly. She feels it and runs her hands down, onto his chest, placing them over his heart as she refuses to drop his gaze.

"I know you're the one. You always have been. But I've gotten in the habit of telling myself you're not an option. It all got so complicated . I felt like it was too far gone. I guess after the accident I thought I had dodged a bullet, you know. My momma _died _trying to be with _her_ Deacon and I thought history was attempting to repeat itself. I thought that was my final warning. I thought I'd thrown you over the edge of all the hard work you'd done for fourteen years."

He dips his head, unable to think without pain of the accident, or its aftermath, or how badly he took the news about Maddie. He has made his peace with it, but it still strikes a nerve. She's not done, though, and she lifts his chin to bring his eyes to hers.

"But then you did what you always do and you came back. You got better, you straightened everything out and just like that you were making albums and being an amazing dad." His eyes fill. That she could think that of him. Its too much, almost.

"And then what feels like five minutes later you stood there in my kitchen and just gave me your heart, and you made me realise how incredibly simple it all is. I love you. I am crazy, stupid, romantic movie in love with you. I don't have to rationalise that anymore, or hide it away. At last, I can just be with you."

"Feels good, doesn't it?" She nods, placing a tiny kiss on his chest.

"I got a feeling it's only gonna get better."

"Mmmm," he murmurs, eyes closed as he takes in the wonder of it all. "I think you might be right about that."

He kisses her again, and they are lost for several minutes.

"No one has ever made me feel the way you do," she tells him, and he feels those damn tears pricking again, because that's exactly how _he's_ always felt about _her _and it is sweet vindication to hear her say that with such authority. He brings her hand to his lips in reverence.

"All the things I'm most proud of, you've been a part of. The big stuff. Every beautiful song we ever wrote. Every scary ass first night out on the road, every album. _Maddie. _You're still the most amazing person I've ever met, and I thank god every day, even on the bad days, that I know you. That I... have you."

He lifts her hand to his lips once again, closing his eyes and letting out a long breath.

"Sweet lord how you do have me. You had me the moment I laid eyes on you."

"I'm just sorry I made you wait so long." She strokes his face with such tenderness, remorse almost. He shakes his head against her palm gently.

"I'm done caring how we got here, Ray. What matters is that we are here."

"And we're staying here. Always."

"Right here? In this bed?" He slides his arm further around her, gathering her closer against his chest. She kisses him like he is the water she has trekked across the Sahara to find. He's a willing accomplice to this role play, wrapping his free hand in the lengths of her hair, entwining them entirely as they sink back against the pillows. The pace is set by her leg hooked less than casually over his, soon kicked up a gear by his hand tracing a slow but sure path along her thigh. She can't remember ever wanting him so much. She revels in being the one thing in his life over which he can't exercise self control. With her, like this, he's as powerless as she is. She loves watching him give in, get taken over by the way it feels to be with her. The sum of their desire is stronger than either of them, and at the end of the day, they don't fight it at all.

In the darkness they sip coffee, steam catching in the light from the hallway and the sliver of moon that inches across the bed. They have slept a little and woken to find that this wasn't a dream, and they are hazy headed with relief and happiness. They've made themselves a tiny world here in his bed, so safe and sound that they could say anything. She wears one of his shirts like old times, and he wears the jeans he sports like a second skin. He's leaning back against the pillows, she is on her front, head on his chest. They have tried to get up, made coffee, looked for food, but they have found themselves back here, drawn to the bed where they can be close, touch, talk, kiss.

"Do you remember our first kiss?" He asks. She rolls her eyes at him.

"What a stupid question." He smiles.

"It was after we wrote our first song together. I was seventeen and we were sitting down by the river," she says, with confidence. In that same spot they have gone back to time after time, never able to let go of that memory, he thinks. Eventually the city put a bench there, as though they knew how much time the two of them spent sitting on their jackets on the grass bank.

"Actually," he corrects, "I think it was _while_ we wrote that song." She laughs. He may have lost some memories to the Jim Beam, but that sure isn't one of them.

"Yeah, that sounds more like it," she says, stretching out on her side, placing one hand beneath her head. "I remember thinking it had been a long time coming." He nods.

"I just remember feeling all kinds of lucky. And kinda scared that your daddy would come find me." She touches his chest, feeling his heart beating, strong and silent.

"That was a lot of years ago babe." And they have shared many, many amazing kisses since, he thinks. It's a list they are still working on. He cups her face, adds the latest entry.

" Well I'm definitely older and uglier but I still feel the same way about the same girl." He can see this melts her a little. She hooks her leg over his, pulling him to her.

"You're beautiful. And I love you. And I can't wait to be your wife." He kisses her slowly, deeply, the way he has wanted to for so long, feeling free at last to just love her like he wants to. He feels something close to lightness that he has so seldom felt before - and every time with her. He has been sceptical about happiness, but he knows when he is beaten, and how delightfully so. He has a fleeting flash forward of all the future moments like this they can and will now share - the quiet nights in, the post-show early hours of the morning, the weary five am starts, the Sundays with the girls, all of his days starting and ending in a bed somewhere with Rayna. It's too good to be true. But it is true, and it calls for a celebration, so he releases her from his arms and rolls out of bed.

He returns a minute later, handing her a pad and a pen. She looks at him in mild surprise as he climbs back onto the bed, leaning against the headboard with the guitar across his lap.

"What?" he says, the smallest hint of a smile on his lips, starting to strum softly. "This is how I get girls to kiss me."

It still works, too.

END


End file.
